Fishing on the Dock of the Bay

The boys, Will in particular, have been after me for some time to take them fishing. Of course, I immediately agreed to the idea of fishing "some day," and have since then been on the search to find someone who could provide some instruction. I'm a girl to whom camping means sleeping at the Marriott, so some of the intricacies of fishing are not so appealing to me, like baiting the hook or touching a fish.

Still, wanting to appeal to their male hunting and gathering instincts, I was so excited to find out about fishing from the dock of the Wetlands Institute. It takes place every Saturday at 9:30 am. A staff member gives the kids instruction, helps them bait the hooks, and sets them off to fish for themselves off the dock. (Teach a kid to fish. . . there's a metaphor in here somewhere.)

We headed out to the Institute this Saturday morning. It was a gray morning, good fishing weather, one might assume. The fishing pier is a healthy walk through the marsh--a pair of sneakers and a sturdy stroller would be helpful--but the walk alone makes the trip worthwhile. Every so often, we'd come across little black cages along the path, which we can to discover were protecting turtle eggs from raccoons, skunks and other predators. We even saw a mother turtle laying her eggs in a nest--a great culmination to the lessons we'd learned about turtles during our last trip to the Institute. They do lead official tours through the marsh and I hope to take the kids later in the summer.

Once at the dock, each child got his own fishing pole and a mini tutorial on how to operate the rod and reel. The instructor then marched our little fishermen out on the dock, they cast their lines, and they waited. "Do you know what another name for fishing is?," the instructor asked. The children didn't. "It's called waiting," she explained.

So they waited and waited. And waited and waited. And, so they tell us, that is fishing.

I had instructed the boys to catch us a fish for dinner. Carter was the first to hook something--a tasty bunch of seaweed. He opted to release his catch and we had pizza for dinner instead.